Speakers

8x8

Enzo Signore

CMO

With extensive international experience and a global world view, Enzo drives 8x8’s successful expansion into mid-market and enterprise organizations around the world by showing business leaders how intelligent enterprise communications can transform their organizations. Enzo brings to 8x8 more than 20 years of global marketing, product management, sales, and business development experience. He was most recently Vice President of Worldwide Enterprise Solutions and Field Marketing at Avaya. Enzo has also served as Vice President, Corporate Marketing and Vice President of Asia-Pacific Sales for optical communications supplier JDSU, where he rapidly grew the business across the entire region. Prior to JDSU, Enzo was Senior Director of Marketing for Cisco’s Broadband Access portfolio, which he grew from inception to a multi-hundred million dollar operation.

AudioCodes

Eric Bauer

VP Marketing & Business Development

Eric Bauer, AudioCodes VP of Marketing and Business Development, is a resonating voice in the telecommunications industry. In this role, He oversees corporate marketing and communications for AudioCodes while managing strategic partnerships in North America. In his career he has held titles of Global Head of Product Marketing, Director of Unified Communications and Consulting Director. He also possesses a Bachelor’s Degree from Juniata College in Computer Science. His background, giving insight to the architecture behind various solutions, has catapulted his positioning as a leading industry voice through blogging, online presentations, and contributions to analyst and press interviews. Eric resides in Colorado with his wife and children where he can be found hiking or enjoying a Mets game in his free time. If you’d like to connect with Eric he’s happy to hear from readers on his blog at www.blog.audiocodes.com

Bit6

Alexey Goloshubin

CEO / CTO

Alexey has 20 years of experience as an entrepreneur and software architect with a track record of launching, growing, and selling multiple successful businesses. He has held executive management and chief technologist roles, providing both business leadership and product vision for his companies. A thought leader in the real-time communications technologies, Alexey has presented and spoken at numerous conferences this past year including WebRTC World 2015, WebRTC Expo 2015, DevCon NYC, ClueCon, and Integrate 2015.As a technologist, Alexey is an expert in designing and developing advanced communications software services, including VoIP (Voice-over-IP) and other OTT (Over-the-Top) technologies. He has been awarded two patents and have several other patents pending. Alexeys vision and expertise allowed him to start Voxofon, which was a pioneer in the mobile communications app space, launching the first VoIP app for Android devices and becoming one of the top social media apps in iTunes and Google Play. The infrastructure and platform that was built for Voxofon became the basis for Bit6, Alexeys newest venture. With Bit6, he hopes to revolutionize how developers integrate communications into their apps and websites.

Blacc Spot Media

Lantre Barr

Founder & CEO

Lantre Barr is the Founder & CEO of Blacc Spot Media, a mobile and web development agency located in Atlanta, Ga focusing on the emerging technology, Web Real-Time Communications (WebRTC). He founded the company with the goal of creating innovative solutions using new technologies that are centered around live audio and video capabilities in order to develop custom applications, enterprise platforms and mobile applications for a wide array of clients around the world. Lantre’s professional career path with emerging technology started through untraditional means. He received his Bachelor of Architecture degree from Tuskegee University and holds a Master of Construction degree from Auburn University. During the economic downturn due to the housing crisis in 2008, Lantre found himself laid off with a bleak outlook on a promising career path. After experiencing 18 months of unemployment and without any job prospects on the horizon, Lantre decided to create an opportunity for himself in the software development world. He became a self-taught developer and upon mastering his newfound skill sets, he opened the doors to Blacc Spot Media in April 2011. Five years later, Blacc Spot Media has become one of the worlds leading development agencies that focus solely on WebRTC implementations for clients all over the world. Due to his unique and keen insight into all things WebRTC related, Lantre is touted as one of the premier thought leaders in his industry.

Broadsoft

Mark C. Straton

Vice President, Product Marketing and Media Relations

Mark has held numerous product marketing leadership roles for technology and telecom companies, including serving in various marketing roles at Siemens for 18 years. In his role at BroadSoft, Mr. Straton is responsible for content and product marketing and media relations including analyst, press and social. Previously, Mr. Straton was Vice President, Market Intelligence and Media Relations with responsibility for digital marketing, strategic messaging, market research and analyst, press and social media.

Dialogic

Alan Percy

Senior Director of Product Marketing

Mr. Percy is the Senior Director of Product Marketing at Dialogic, responsible for the global marketing efforts to nurture the growing community of real-time communications and WebRTC applications developers with the rich media processing solutions from Dialogic. Included in his role, Mr. Percy is also responsible for developing and managing a number of strategic industry, consultant and analyst relationships. He is also a frequent industry speaker and contributes to a number of industry journals, podcasts, webcasts and blogs covering a range of communications and technology adoption topics.

Drips.com

Fuze

Michael Affronti

VP of Product

Michael Affronti is the VP of product at Fuze, a tech company that builds unified collaboration apps and services for large enterprises. Affronti joined Fuze in January 2015 via the acquisition of Contactive, a big-data startup in NYC, where he ran the product and design team for the previous two years. Prior to Contactive and Fuze, Affronti spent 10 years at Microsoft in Seattle, working in product development to build social collaboration experiences in Lync, Office365, Outlook, Exchange, and Yammer. Affronti is also an instructor at General Assembly, advises several startups in NYC and Seattle, and regularly blogs about product management, leadership, and productivity. He holds two U.S. patents and has 13 more pending for innovations in the enterprise productivity space.

IBM

Jamie Thomas

General Manager, Strategy & Development

Ms. Thomas is responsible for Strategy, Development and Client Experience for IBM’s POWER, Mainframe and Storage Offerings. In this role, she is responsible for setting and executing the innovation plans required to support clients worldwide. In addition, Ms. Thomas owns IBM’s WW Supply Chain Operations supporting all manufacturing. Recently she was General Manager of Storage and set the strategic direction of storage solutions focused on traditional data center and cloud deployment models. She played a central role in establishing IBM’s software defined storage Spectrum brand and enabling the growth of the Flash storage business.During her tenure at IBM, Ms. Thomas has held various product development and brand leadership roles. Prior Ms. Thomas was the Vice President of IBM Tivoli Strategy and Development where she focused on strategic solutions in support of Internet of Things and Cloud. From 2007 to 2009, she was the Vice President of Rational Development and Client Support responsible for worldwide development and support of the IBM Rational Software Brand, spanning enterprise and complex systems solutions. She served as Vice President of WebSphere Server Development, responsible for the expansion of the WebSphere Java business from 2004 to 2006.She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in computer science from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

iconectiv

Chris Drake

Chief Technology Officer

Chris Drake, Chief Technology Officer at iconectiv, is responsible for internal and external technology initiatives at iconectiv including emerging opportunities in mobile content, CyberSecurity, mobile identity, virtualization and M2M/IoT. ). As the authoritative partner of the communications industry for more than 30 years, iconectiv’s market-leading solutions enable the interconnection of networks, devices, and applications for more than one billion people every day. A US-based company, Telcordia Technologies, Inc., doing business as iconectiv, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ericsson.Drake began his career at Bell Northern Research and has over 25 years in the Telecommunications industry. Prior to iconectiv, Chris held executive positions at Aricent Group, Neustar, Sonus Networks, Telcordia Technologies and Advanced Switching Communications.Drake also serves as an advisor to a number of technology startups and the Canadian Consulate Tech Accelerator @ NYC. Drake is also on the board and executive committee of the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) and has served on the Industrial Advisory Board for the Security and Software Engineering Research Center (S2ERC IAB) through Georgetown University and the National Science Foundation.Drake holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Ottawa.

Ingate Systems

Steven Johnson

President

Steven Johnson has 20 years of senior management experience, working with companies including Sanders Associates, Telco Systems, and Lockheed Martin as well as Ingate Systems. Prior to Ingate, he served as CEO of Abrena, Inc, a business development consulting firm focused on assisting European and North American firms to expand in the United States. Previous to that, he was President and CEO of Transcept Inc., a telecommunications infrastructure company. Steve holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and a Master’s in Business Administration from Boston University.

MegaPath

Paul Marra

Director, Product Management

Paul Marra is Director of Product Management at MegaPath, a leading provider of voice, data, security and cloud services in North America. Paul has over 20 years of experience in both facilities and non-facilities based IP solutions and he has been integral to developing MegaPath’s unprecedented Voice and Cloud Services product lines. Prior to joining MegaPath, Paul led product development and business development activities at DSL.net and was one of the driving forces for their entry into the VoIP space.

OnSIP

John Riordan

CTO & Head of Engineering

John Riordan is the Cofounder and CTO of OnSIP, a cloud real-time communications provider that has served over 40,000 customers. John studied computer science and cognitive science at MIT in the late 80s. After spending a few years as a software engineer on Wall Street, he cofounded an ISP that was later acquired by RCN. He has since cofounded OnSIP in 2004, received an 2011 American Business Award for Management Team of the Year in Product Development, and been named a WebRTC Pioneer.

Onvoy, LLC

Fritz Hendricks

CEO

Fritz Hendricks has more than 30 years of experience in the telecommunications industry. Fritz was COO prior to becoming the president of Onvoy, Inc. As COO of Onvoy he was responsible for Engineering, Operations, Information Technology, Product Innovations, Product Management, Market Development and Customer Service. Fritz started his career working at Cox Communications delivering competitive telecom services using a hybrid fiber coax system. After Cox, he had a 17 year career with US WEST (now CenturyLink) where he held leadership positions in center and field operations, next generation business and technology planning, engineering, and systems automation culminating as the Vice President of Operations for Qwest Global Services. Fritz has served as the Chairman of the Minnesota Telecom Alliance Technology and Engineering Board and on the Best Prep Tech Corp Board of Directors, a non-profit organization that supports the advancement of technology education in public schools. Fritz holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Bellevue and is a graduate of the Carnegie Mellon Information Networking Institute for Advance Telecommunication Innovation.

PhenixP2P

Tripp Welge

Chief Operating Officer

Tripp Welge is the Chief Operating Officer of PhenixP2P Inc. Mr. Welge has a diverse background of building businesses through private equity investing and direct operations. He began his career as an investment banker before joining Waud Capital Partners, a middle¬-market private equity fund where he worked to invest in, and accelerate the growth of, healthcare service companies. In 2011, Mr. Welge joined Groupon Inc., where he was responsible for managing and growing Groupon’s West Coast and Canadian local business. In 2014 he joined Medical Search Technologies, where he previously served as an advisor, and spent nearly two years helping to shape the direction of the business and getting the product to market. Mr. Welge graduated from Miami University with a B.S. in Finance in 2006.

PKE Consulting LLC & UC Strategies.com

Phil Edholm

President and Principal

Phil Edholm is the President of PKE Consulting. PKE consults to end users and vendors in the communications and networking markets. Phil is the organizer of WebRTC World Conf & Expo, the global eco-system event for WebRTC. Phil Edholm has over 30 years experience in creating innovation and transformation in networking and communications. In his career, Phil has worked with all of the major vendors and with hundreds of large customers around the world. He is recognized as an industry expert in VoIP, networking for real-time usage, Unified Communications, and business models for technology adoption. Prior to founding PKE , he was Vice President of Technology Strategy and Innovation for Avaya. In this role, he was responsible for defining vision and strategic technology and the integration of the Nortel product portfolio into Avaya. He was responsible for portfolio architecture, standards activities, and User Experience. Prior to Avaya, he was CTO/CSO for the Nortel Enterprise business for 9 years. At Nortel, he led the development of VoIP solutions and multimedia communications as well as IP transport technology. His background includes extensive LAN and data communications experience, including 13 years with Silicon Valley start-ups.Phil is recognized as an industry leader and visionary. In 2007, he was recognized by Frost and Sullivan with a Lifetime Achievement Award for Growth, Innovation and Leadership in Telecommunications for dreating the VoIP industry. Phil is a widely sought speaker and has been in the VoiceCon/Enterprise Connect Great Debate three times. He has been recognized by the IEEE as the originator of “Edholm’s Law of Bandwidth” as published in July 2004 IEEE Spectrum magazine and as one of the “Top 100 Voices of IP Communications by Internet Telephony magazine. Phil was a member of the IEEE 802.3 standards committee, developed the first multi-protocol network interfaces, and was a founder of the Frame Relay Forum. Phil has 16 patents and holds a BSME/EE from Kettering University.

Plantronics

Tom Wesselman

Senior Director, Software Group.

Tom Wesselman is the Senior Director, Software Group at Plantronics. His focus is connecting the capabilities of Plantronics products to the world around them. This starts with defining and building the data and services provided by Plantronics’ wearable technology, and then by working with partners and developers to integrate those capabilities into the applications people use. Prior to Plantronics, Wesselman held senior engineering roles at Cisco, where he led a variety of UC engineering programs including the development of the company’s first UC client.

Plantronics

Jennifer Adams

Head of Global Collaboration Markets

Jennifer Adams serves as the director, Enterprise Solutions Marketing. In this role she directs strategic marketing for enterprise business products and solutions globally, including traditional office headset solutions, unified communications and collaboration solutions. She also manages the Alliance Marketing team which works with the company’s major strategic alliance partners. Jennifer joined Plantronics in 2006, working in the home office division for three years until it was integrated into the enterprise division and her focus shifted to global enterprise product marketing. While at Plantronics, Jennifer launched the Plantronics Unified Communications Portfolio in 2010, which continues to be the largest growth segment for the company, and spearheaded strategic marketing initiatives including the globalization of a Virtual Collaboration sales and marketing program designed to provide richer engagement with customers in order to ease transitions around communication evolution.Prior to Plantronics Jennifer managed marketing at Celestron, a leading consumer optics manufacturer.Jennifer holds a BA, Public Relations from the Annenberg School of Journalism at University of Southern California.

PulverHWC

Jeff Pulver

Founder

Jeff Pulver is a Futurist and American Internet entrepreneur known for his work as founder of pulver.com, Free World Dialup and Vonage. Jeff is an Internet Pioneer whose work helped popularize the use and adoption of VoIP worldwide. He helped change the way the world communicates. The communication law issued by the Federal Communications Commission named after him known as The Pulver Order is the reason Internet based services like: FaceTime, Skype and Messenger are offered for free. Since 1997 he has invested in over 400 startups and has served as founder, co-founder and chairman of numerous startups. His most recent set of conferences started in 2016 is called MoNage, where he explores the future of communications.

RingCentral

Curtis Peterson

SVP of Cloud Operations

Curtis Peterson is SVP, Cloud Operations at RingCentral where he is responsible for strategic planning and growth of infrastructure for the global cloud communications platform.Prior to joining RingCentral, Curtis was VP of Operations Center at Windstream. As VP of Operations, led the transformation of the Centers, built out a Managed Security and Network Support groups. Before taking on that role, Curtis was Director of IS at NuVox (acquired by Windstream), where he led the product development efforts for data, security, internet and networking solutions which became the blueprint for their VoxNET and VoxIP offerings. He has also held positions at New South Communications, AOL, Michelin and Auburn City Schools.Curtis completed his study in Computer Engineering from Auburn University. He lives in Half Moon Bay, Calif. with his wife and two children.

Temasys Communications

Chip Wilcox

Chief Marketing Officer

Chip has over 25 years of experience with an international track record in leadership, general management, planning, product and operations management. He was a Product Manager for Yahoo! Mail and Messenger (SEA) and has held senior roles in Digital Media, Healthcare, Consulting, Insurance and Financial Services with Yahoo!, International SOS, CapGemini, and others. He joined Temasys in 2014 as SVP Operations, was CEO from May 2014 to December 2015, and now holds responsibility for product, marketing and public relations for Temasys. He holds a BA from DePauw University and earned an MBA from the University of Washington Foster School of Business.

Vertical Communications

Peter Bailey

President & Chief Executive Officer

As a co-founder of Vertical Communications in 2004 (along with Mr. Tauscher), Peter Bailey has led a talented team to the Companys current incarnation as a market and thought leader in the enterprise communications technology sector. With over 20 years of experience in technology, operations, finance and executive management, Peter is responsible for Verticals overall strategic direction, and is intimately involved in its day-to-day operations. Prior to his current role as President and CEO, he served as President and COO with responsibility for the Companys sales, marketing and operations organizations. In 2011, Peter was appointed CEO and joined the Board of Directors for Vertical. Since that time he has led the company through a period of significant growth and market share expansion. He credits Verticals talented, dedicated and extremely stubborn staff for all the Companys ongoing success, noting, Business is the ultimate team sport, and we have a fantastic team. Peter started his career with Salomon Brothers, Inc. in New York, and holds a B.A. from Princeton University.

VMware

Sumit Dhawan

SVP and GM End-user Computing

Sumit Dhawan is Senior Vice President and General Manager of VMware’s End User Computing desktop business. He leads product development, product management, strategy and delivery for enterprise, cloud services, personal desktop, and application delivery and management products.Prior to his current role, he was Group Vice President & General Manager of the mobile products for Citrix. At Citrix, he drove Citrix’s entry into the mobile management market, including the acquisition of Zenprise. Dhawan was one of the key leaders in driving product, marketing and Go-To-Market strategy for several end user computing products at Citrix, including Citrix’s entry into the desktop virtualization market. Dhawan was instrumental in getting Citrix to build a $1B+ business in desktop virtualization. Dhawan has nearly 20 years of experience within enterprise software industry. Dhawan holds degrees in both business and science, with a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Florida and a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Minnesota. Dhawan graduated with a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology.

WIA - The Wireless Infrastructure Association

Jonathan Adelstein

President & CEO

Jonathan S. Adelstein is the President & Chief Executive Officer of WIA–The Wireless Infrastructure Association. WIA represents over 200 companies devoted to building wireless broadband facilities that connect every corner of America. Since he became President in 2012, over 100 new members have joined the association, the annual wireless infrastructure show has broken participation records, a new association was formed in Europe, and a new nationwide training initiative and WIA PAC were launched. WIA is the principal organization representing the companies that build, design, own and manage telecommunications facilities throughout the world. Its over 200 members include carriers, infrastructure providers and professional services firms, with a combined market cap of over $400 billion.Mr. Adelstein served as Commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from 2002 to 2009, for which he was twice nominated by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. At the FCC he achieved bipartisan progress on issues including broadband expansion, widening access to the Internet and media diversity.In 2009, following the FCC, Mr. Adelstein was nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate to serve as the Administrator of U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service. There, he oversaw a $60 billion portfolio of rural electric, water, and telecommunications infrastructure loans. He spearheaded the strategic investment of nearly $7 billion under the Recovery Act into rural broadband and water infrastructure, as part of annual budgets of up to $15 billion.As a member of the Obama Administration, Mr. Adelstein was appointed as a member of the White House National Science and Technology Council, which coordinates science and technology policy across the Federal government, and the White House Business Council, leading Council meetings with business leaders across America.Previously, Mr. Adelstein held a number of legislative staff positions over 15 years in the U.S. Senate, culminating as a senior policy advisor to the Senate Majority Leader. Mr. Adelstein received an M.A. in History and a B.A., with Distinction, in Political Science from Stanford University. He attended the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and served as a Teaching Fellow in history at Harvard University and a Teaching Assistant at Stanford University. He is a graduate of Phillips Academy, Andover. He was born and raised in Rapid City, South Dakota. An avid musician, he has performed with artists from local garage bands to members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He currently lives with his wife and two children in the Washington, D.C. area.

Yorktel

Vishal Brown

Vice President of Professional Services

Vishal is Vice President of Professional Services at Yorktel. He is focused on delivering video communications expertise by leveraging Yorktel’s industry leading knowledge & experience to help organizations analyze & enable video for Unified Communications platforms. This includes not just implementing unified communication solutions, but also thought leadership and strategic planning, policies and procedures to make the initiative effective. He has 15 years of experience in technologies that improve the way people communicate, collaborate, and connect - enterprise unified communications, voice and video telephony, corporate AV and consumer video.

Moderator List

Andy Abramson (Moderator)

Comunicano, Inc.

CEO

Andy Abramson is the founder of Comunicano, Inc., a full-service value creation communications agency, servicing start-ups, companies in transition and established brands with regard to marketing, advertising, public relations, promotion, events and reputation management.Founded in 1992, Comunicano operates globally as a virtual company, since 2000 the company has participated in the 40 company exits in the fintech, web, Internet, mobile, telecom or IT infrastructure sectors. Andy started his career in the marketing department of a professional sports team at age 14 and has been at it ever since. He has held a series of marketing and communications managerial roles with three professional sports teams - Philadelphia Wings, Philadelphia Flyers and Denver Nuggets, with roles in senior account management within the Foote, Cone and Belding/Impact and guiding the public relations and sports marketing for The Upper Deck Company, before founding Comunicano in 1992.Often quoted in the consumer and technology press, since 2003 Andy has authored VoIPWatch (http://www.andyabramson.com), a leading industry blog focused on mobile, video, voice, collaboration and OTT technology. He is also heard on the syndicated radio program, Business Rockstars, while also serving as a member of the board of advisors of multiple startups around the world.

Mark Ricca (Moderator)

IntelliCom Analytics

Partner

Mark Ricca is a founding Partner of IntelliCom Analytics, a boutique Market Research and Professional Services firm established in August 2005. IntelliCom Analytics is focused on assisting suppliers in the Information Technology (IT) industry, and end users seeking cost-effective IT solutions. The Firm provides a range of consulting services to end user clients in the enterprise and mid-market segments, IT equipment manufacturers / software application developers, wireline / wireless network service providers, and distribution channels.

Joel Maloff (Moderator)

Phone.com

SVP, Chief Compliance Officer

Mr. Maloff is a globally recognized expert and author on Internet, its uses for business purposes, and the convergence with traditional telephony. He currently serves as Senior Vice President – Strategic Alliances and Partnerships for Phone.com (www.phone.com), and has responsibility for the Channel Partner Program, Inside Sales organization, large scale business development, and assistance with network-related strategies and tactics. In addition, Mr. Maloff has been an Adjunct Professor at Colorado Technical University for more than four years, and has taught introductory classes, information technology (such as Disaster Recovery and Network Design and Implementation), Introduction to Marketing, and created a course on Digital Marketing. With forty years of experience, he has served as Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for one of the first SIP trunking service providers, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for an international VoIP carrier, the CTO of a network security authentication device manufacturer, General Manager of a broadband wireless Internet provider, Chief Operating Officer (COO) for an Internet professional services company, and as Executive Director of the Big Ten universities research network (CICNet). Mr. Maloff has written several books, spoken at industry conferences worldwide, written numerous articles, and was a regular columnist for VON Magazine (now defunct). As a consultant, he provided services to the most senior people at Nationwide Insurance, MetLife, Borders Books and Music, Discovery Channel, The Toro Company, Worldcom, Sprint, Frontier Telecom, Siemens, Telenor (Norway), France Telecom, and many others.Among his more notable accomplishments, Mr. Maloff acted as a consultant to then Senator Al Gore in the drafting of the High Performance Computing Act which went on to become the basis of the commercial Internet as we know it today. He was further involved in the commercialization of the Internet as part of Advanced Network & Services which managed the backbone for the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNet) in the late 1980’s/early 1990s.

Phil Edholm (Moderator)

PKE Consulting LLC & UC Strategies.com

President and Principal

Phil Edholm is the President and Principal of PKE Consulting. PKE consults to end users and vendors in the communications and networking markets. PKE works with our clients to deliver the value of the integration of information and interaction. Whether with Unified Communications or integration of communications and business processes, PKE has the experience and knowledge to transform your organization. Phil is also the organizer of WebRTC World Expo and Conference, the global eco-system event for WebRTC, the next major transformation in technology.Phil Edholm has over 30 years experience in creating innovation and transformation in networking and communications. Prior to founding PKE , he was Vice President of Technology Strategy and Innovation for Avaya. In this role, he was responsible for defining vision and strategic technology and the integration of the Nortel product portfolio into Avaya. He was responsible for portfolio architecture, standards activities, and User Experience. Prior to Avaya, he was CTO/CSO for the Nortel Enterprise business for 9 years. At Nortel, he led the development of VoIP solutions and multimedia communications as well as IP transport technology. His background includes extensive LAN and data communications experience, including 13 years with Silicon Valley start-ups.Phil is recognized as an industry leader and visionary. In 2007, he was recognized by Frost and Sullivan with a Lifetime Achievement Award for Growth, Innovation and Leadership in Telecommunications. Phil is a widely sought speaker and has been in the VoiceCon/Enterprise Connect Great Debate three times. He has been recognized by the IEEE as the originator of “Edholm’s Law of Bandwidth” as published in July 2004 IEEE Spectrum magazine and as one of the “Top 100 Voices of IP Communications by Internet Telephony magazine. Phil was a member of the IEEE 802.3 standards committee, developed the first multi-protocol network interfaces, and was a founder of the Frame Relay Forum. Phil has 16 patents and holds a BSME/EE from Kettering University.

Rich Tehrani (Moderator)

TMC

CEO, Group Editor-in-Chief

Rich Tehrani is the CEO and group Editor-In-Chief of TMC, as well as the Founder and Conference Chairman of ITEXPO, a leading technology trade show held twice each year. Rich oversees a diverse portfolio of successful technology magazines, web sites and trade events at TMC, which recently celebrated its 44th anniversary. Rich has guided TMC’s ascension and evolution from a print publishing and trade show company focused exclusively on voice/data convergence and computer telephony integration (CTI) markets, into a media powerhouse covering all of today’s most important technologies – Wireless/Mobile, Cloud Computing, IP Communications, IoT, and more. Rich is TMC’s driving force in the creation and implementation of pioneering publications and events. Since launching TMCnet in 1995, Rich has pioneered the development of more than 300 online communities of interest, revolutionizing the online world and changing the way companies leverage their brands online. Rich is a media icon, maintaining an active role as an Editor-In-Chief and a very prominent technology blogger/social media participant. TMC’s event and online platforms serve as an incubator for new concepts from the leading minds in the technology space. Rich launched and oversees the ITEXPO Franchise (which is in its 34th installment) – and is constantly adding collocated events by using his creativity and ability to launch synergistic conferences. Various collocated events include: CVx (ChannelVision Expo), IoT Evolution Conference & Expo, IDEA Showcase, and MSP Expo. Aside from his contributions to the online media world, Rich is an active and engaged philanthropist. He a member of the local JCC, a Board Member of the UCONN Engineering Department, and the engineer behind the future TMC Technology Center at a local Boys & Girls Club. This is all in addition to being an active and involved father and member of the community in Fairfield County, Connecticut where he lives with his wife and two daughters.